Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘Whatever our lady requires,’ Wicked said.

‘And that’s why you got hugs,’ I said.

Jane landed in a fall of black hooded cloak. It would match her outfit, so that she looked like a movie ninja until she pushed back the hood to reveal the very blond hair and the large blue eyes. I’d seen men react to the delicate beauty of her, until they got a taste of her coldness. She was about my size, delicate but curvy, because she’d been recruited from a time when to be too thin meant you were poor or ill. She was as silent and self-contained as any of the Harlequin vampires, as cool and controlled as Goran and his master were hotheaded and uncontrolled.

She stood and came toward us, moving in a glide that caused the black cloak to billow and wave around her almost as if it were alive on its own. I wasn’t sure how she did it, but she wasn’t the only one of the Harlequin who could make the cloaks distractingly dramatic. As Seamus was Water, because of his grace, she was Ice, because she let nothing ruffle her, and she was as inexorable as a glacier, and as patient. There was something a little scary about Jane. She’d never done anything to me, or said an unkind word, but she was unnerving somehow.

I untangled myself from Wicked Truth and turned to face her. Did I apologize for taking her animal to call into harm’s way? ‘I’m sorry that Seamus has been compromised.’

‘He was doing his job,’ she said.

Okay, so much for pleasantries. ‘Can you sense Seamus?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Is he still bound to you?’ I asked.

‘Yes and no.’

‘Explain.’

‘The Lover of Death has not broken our tie completely. It is almost as if we are sharing Seamus, which is not possible.’

‘If Seamus comes, we will give you a chance to win him back to you completely, but if he tries to fight us … we can’t let that happen, Jane.’

‘He is too dangerous, I understand,’ she said.

‘Do you understand the consequences?’

‘If he dies, I may die. It is almost a certainty now that our Dark Mother is dead and no longer sharing her power with us. We, her guards, are much diminished.’ Her voice never changed inflection. She might have been talking about what we’d do tomorrow if it didn’t rain.

‘I’m sorry for that, but I can’t be sorry for why it happened.’

‘Understood,’ she said.

‘Okay, then, I’ll introduce everyone around.’ I did, and Paris was the one who tried to flirt with Jane. She looked at him as if he were less than nothing, a pimple on the butt of the universe and she could have cared less. Wicked and Truth bothered the SWAT guys for the same reason that Dev, Nicky, and Lisandro did: SWAT wasn’t used to meeting other men who made them for a moment think, Would I win this fight? They were friendly about it, but I knew that Wicked had picked up on it; I couldn’t tell if Truth had, or if he cared. If we’d had more time Wicked would have played with them a little, gently, but he would have amused himself.

I was about to try to do something that most animators couldn’t have attempted at all, and those who could would have needed a human sacrifice to even try, which was very illegal, but I’d had more than one zombie raising where the power wanted to spread outside the circle of power. The circle was to keep the zombie you raised inside just in case something went wrong, but it was also there to keep things out. There are things that will inhabit corpses, especially fresh ones, until the body starts to rot and then everything leaves it. I’d accidentally raised entire cemeteries before when people had died inside the circle of power. It had been enough energy that the circle had cracked and spread the power throughout the cemetery. One of the times that the energy had wanted to spread had been without a circle of protection and with a vampire at my back acting as my undead energy boost. I was going to try to replicate that, but this time I wasn’t going to fight the power, I was going to indulge it. I was purposefully going to raise as many zombies as I could. I was chumming for the Lover of the Death to come play with me. He thought that having some of the power of the Mother of All Darkness inside him made him a bad-ass necromancer; I was going to do everything I could to show him that I was better at it. I needed him to come close enough for me to raise a circle with him inside it, and then all I had to do was keep him trapped in the body he walked in with, and give the word to Hatfield to burn the one on her end. She still hadn’t found the body, but she had found the old mine that he’d been hiding in. Little Henry had been right that it was a maze. I prayed she’d find the body before he showed up on this end, because if not we were fucked. To kill him, the body he was in and the body he’d started in both had to burn.

We were in the modern open area of the cemetery. It gave the snipers the best chance. It left us open for the same thing, but long gun wasn’t Seamus’s strong suit, and the Lover of Death wouldn’t shoot us. If he killed us tonight it would be death by zombie, or rotting vampire, nothing as clean and neat as a bullet.

Nicky came to me and spoke low. ‘Why are you delaying?’

He was right. ‘I think I’m afraid.’

‘That you can’t do it?’

‘No, that I can.’

‘Why does that scare you?’ he asked.

I took a deep breath and was honest with the gibbering voice in the back of my head. ‘I’ve fought my necromancy for years to not do the very thing I’m about to do on purpose.’

‘Create your own army of the undead?’

I nodded.

‘What scares you about it the most?’

I looked up at him. ‘That I’ll enjoy it too much.’

‘It’s okay to enjoy what we’re good at, Anita.’

‘It’s not okay to enjoy certain things, it’s dangerous.’

‘You mean how you’re not supposed to enjoy killing people, or hurting them?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, like that.’

‘Do you feel guilty about anyone you’ve killed?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Me either; now do this, Anita. Let your power out of its cage and see how far it runs.’

‘What if it runs too far to put back in its cage?’

‘If you’re the one controlling the zombie army, I know it will be a good zombie army, because you are my moral compass and you always point true north, Anita. Don’t let your doubts, or anyone else’s issues, make you think otherwise.’

‘Are you sure you’re a sociopath?’ I asked.

‘Pretty sure, yeah; why?’

‘Because somehow I didn’t think sociopaths were good at being comforting.’

‘We can be great at it, because we spend our lives play-acting, pretending so that we fit in and no one suspects that we have no idea why people are nice to each other.’

‘You understand that was completely not comforting, right?’

‘Yes, but I don’t have to pretend with you; you already know that I’m a sociopath, and you love me anyway.’

Edward came up to us. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but what’s the holdup?’

‘Me, worrying about things I shouldn’t be,’ I said.

‘Want some help clearing your head?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘I’m good, Nicky helped.’

Nicky looked at Edward. ‘She’s having one of those what-if-killing-feels-really-good, doesn’t-that-make-me-a-bad-person moments.’

Edward nodded as if that made perfect sense. ‘Then it feels good. We can’t really control what flips our switch; don’t judge it, Anita, and just accept it.’

I wanted to argue, but it would have been beyond stupid to argue with the two sociopaths in my life. ‘Why do I have moral quandary questions with the two of you?’

‘Because you don’t really have moral quandaries about violence, Anita, but you’re afraid of being judged for enjoying it, so you only bring it to the two people in your life who won’t judge you.’